If all planned solar inverter manufacturing expansion is completed, domestic companies could meet demand following the FCC’s ban on new foreign inverter products, according to a market analysis by Wood Mackenzie. There is more than 100 GWAC of new announced solar inverter manufacturing slated to start production before 2028.
Credit: ForeFront Power
“The FCC’s intent here is clear. The U.S. government determined that the U.S.’s reliance on foreign inverters poses a national security risk, citing both cybersecurity and economic concerns. But the ban’s current definition of ‘power inverters’, focused on wireless communications, leaves real questions about how broadly it will apply, particularly for utility-scale central inverters that operate over wired connections,” said Joe Shangraw, research analyst at Wood Mackenzie. “Future guidance from the FCC will be crucial to understand the full extent of this ban. Leading manufacturers are notifying clients that they believe their products will not fall under the scope of this ban, while project owners are concerned that their existing inverters could be blocked from receiving critical firmware updates.”
Wood Mackenzie found that of the 200 GWAC of PV inverters deployed in U.S. commercial and large-scale solar projects, more than 90% were imported from China and other east Asian sources. Chinese-made inverters represented 50% of U.S. inverter market share in 2024 and 2025. In the short term, the firm expects that domestic inverters will cost more than those foreign imports due to labor and manufacturing costs. But as 45X phases out and inverter competition rises, those costs may stabilize.
“The price premium for domestic inverters is a real consideration for project owners, but it provides supply chain certainty from not only this FCC ban, but from any future policy that could further restrict imports,” Shangraw said. “If this proves to be a major market shift, the US is better positioned now to meet new domestic demand than ever. We forecast the domestic PV/PCS inverter manufacturing market will be able to deliver more than 100 GW ac of capacity by the end of 2027.”
News item from Wood Mackenzie